


Glass Castles

by moolktea



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, minimal amount of fluff, nero propaganda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-31 09:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18588649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moolktea/pseuds/moolktea
Summary: Dante knocks on both Death and Nero's door.With great reluctance, Nero is the only one who answers.





	Glass Castles

**Author's Note:**

> self indulgent vague oneshot AU that 27 chickens were sacrificed for  
> ty DN twitter friends  
> possible expansion on this in the distant, unknown future

Dante has had a lot of shitty days, but this one deserves a special trophy in the contest of his absolutely fucked-up life.

He grits his teeth as he stumbles through the city, his bruised feet walking a path he’s memorized long ago, muscles trembling from pain and the icy cold of the rain soaking through his clothes. Water and blood stings at his eyes, blurring his vision, but he can’t spare a hand to wipe it away, not when his left wrist is so awkwardly sprained and his right arm is wrapped tightly around his abdomen, hand pressed against the stab wound at his side, fresh blood seeping through his fingers.

His back hits the brick wall of a building as he leans his aching head against it for support, coughing wetly as he attempts to gauge the distance between himself and his destination. The walk doesn’t usually feel this far, but, to be fair, he hasn’t been here in at least a couple of weeks.

Dante doesn’t really remember. He’s stopped keeping track of the days a while ago--too many bad ones that he’d really rather forget.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s not actually sure he can make it this time around. He’s had a lot of close calls, especially in the recent months, but this is by far the worst off he’s been in a long time. Trying to take a full inventory of his wounds only makes his head hurt more, and he eventually pulls himself upright again.

Either he collapses on the way there and dies, or he stays here and dies anyway. Not much of a choice, but at least there’s a small measure of hope in that first option.

The further along he gets, the more he feels like his vision is narrowing, until the open road and empty city feel like a tunnel, trapping him in until he can barely make out where’s going at the end. It’s purely muscle memory and the tiny bit of him that still wants to cling to life that keeps him going.

Dante doesn’t even realize when his feet hit the doorstep of his destination and the strength goes out of his body, legs giving way as his vision darkens completely for a moment.

When he comes to again, his good hand is not so good anymore, bleeding from a red and raw scrape he must have gotten when he’d tried to prevent his own head from smashing into the concrete, something he was only partially successful in.

Oh well. He’s already in the worst condition of his life--no harm in adding in a little extra spice to the mix, he supposes.

Bracing himself against the pain, he props himself up with his sprained left wrist, teeth sinking into his lip to prevent the noise that threatens to escape him, and, hoping for the door, along with his prayers, to be answered, knocks at it with his right hand, accidentally smearing blood against the doorframe.

Then he waits.

He loses himself again until there’s the sound of a turning lock and the door cracks open, forcing Dante to groan and shield his eyes against the sudden influx of light.

“You have got to be shitting me.”

Dante chuckles weakly at the sound of his savior’s voice, the movement rattling his possibly broken, definitely cracked ribs in an extremely unpleasant manner.

“Hey, kid. Good to see you again.”

The door is opened wider, and Nero is suddenly kneeling in front of him, reaching a hand out to gently rest in Dante’s tangled hair. There’s an audible sigh of relief from the boy, and the kid’s blue eyes slip shut as he whispers something that sounds an awful lot like Dante’s name.

Then, in a far more audible voice, he snaps, “Fuck you.”

Same old Nero. Dante can always count on that to never change.

“Can you walk? Or…”

Dante grunts, trying to shift himself in a position where he can actually get up, and manages to maneuver himself back into some sort of sit, but finds he can’t do much more than that.

“Uh. Maybe in a minute. Or ten.”

Nero rolls his eyes, then reaches for Dante’s right arm, ducking underneath him and pressing up against Dante’s side as best as he can, helping Dante up into a semi-standing, mostly leaning position.’

“Fucking grandpa,” Nero grumbles, but pulls Dante into his apartment anyway, evidently unbothered by the torrent of rainwater and blood that Dante is dripping all over his floor.

The kid is considerably less muscular than he is--not exactly difficult to achieve, considering what Dante’s line of work was--and can only drag him along for so far, depositing Dante as gently as he can onto his couch.

“This is _so_ fucked up,” Nero says, mostly to himself, running a hand through his hair, looking equal parts exhausted, annoyed, and afraid.

Dante feels immediately guilty, a sensation that is only worsened as he looks around the apartment, noting the open chemistry textbook and the papers still on the kitchen table, as well as the glasses framing the dark circles underneath Nero’s eyes.

“You got an exam coming up?”

Nero ignores him, storming into the bathroom, and Dante can hear him shuffling around the medicine cabinet, gathering up the supplies that must still be here from the last time Dante visited.

Various cabinet-slamming and muttered curses later, Nero emerges, arms full of bandages and bottles and strips of cloth. Dante watches as he shuts the textbook on the table, shoving it aside and dumping the supplies in its place, before digging around in his fridge and unearthing a bottle of beer.

Nero pops it open and hands it off to him without looking at him, waiting until Dante has consumed the contents of the bottle, the only form of crude anesthetic he can really get here, before the kid’s hair-trigger temper erupts and he begins his rant.

“You’re a fucking idiot, Dante. You’re the biggest fucking idiot in the world, you know that?”

Dante remains wisely silent as Nero seizes the cloth and rubbing alcohol and stalks over, plucking the bottle of beer from Dante’s hand. It takes quite a bit to restrain himself from making a quip or two as Nero gently tugs Dante’s shirt over his head and folds it up, dropping it on the end table.

He doesn’t have much ability to speak anyway, though, because Nero is shoving a rolled up piece of cloth into his mouth either to stop Dante from accidentally biting off his own tongue or to stop Dante from talking altogether. Probably both.

“Actually, no,” Nero corrects himself as he pours rubbing alcohol onto a dish towel. “You know who the biggest idiot is? Me. It’s me.”

Dante jerks as Nero presses a hand against his shoulder and dabs the towel onto his various knife wounds, biting out a groan of pain as his teeth involuntarily clamp down on the cloth between them. Nero’s touch is always gentle, despite the boy’s harsh words, but Dante’s cuts are deep, and the necessary sting of the alcohol only multiplies the pain he’s already in.

Even with his senses dampened by the buzz of alcohol, the ache he feels is too sharp to be smothered completely, something Nero seems to realize from the way his hand that’s pressed against Dante’s good shoulder tightens with worry.

“I should drop out of pre-med. Clearly, I don’t have enough brain cells for it--and what few I do have left die a little more each time I keep letting your stupid criminal ass into my house.”

Dante lays his head back against the couch, breathing harshly through his nose as he hangs onto Nero’s words, the boy’s voice oddly soothing despite the amount of vitriol he’s currently directing at Dante. He’d never say it out loud, but angry Nero usually reminded Dante of an absolutely furious tiny kitten, hissing and spitting and unfortunately adorably fluffy.

It takes a few tries, punctuated by Nero’s increasingly heated ranting, but he manages to clean the blood off of most of Dante’s cuts, save for the stab wound, which is still lazily leaking out the crimson fluid.

With the wound clean, Nero sets about to do the extremely unpleasant task of stitching Dante’s wound shut. It’s not the cleanest of procedures, especially with the lack of real anesthesia aside from alcohol, but the kid has nimble hands and slender fingers, and there isn’t anyone in the world that Dante trusts more than Nero.

“I mean, what kind of lizard proto-brain do I have to have in order to actually _like_ someone like you? They should dissect me. Put my brain up in a lab to figure out what sort of disease I have up there.”

Nero neatly snips off the thread, tying off the suture, and Dante takes the opportunity to free his mouth again, dropping the cloth on the floor, much to Nero’s evident displeasure.

“If it’s any consolation, I think you got a good head on your shoulders. And a pretty face.”

Nero’s disgusted expression transfers from the saliva soaked rag on his living room floor to Dante, and Dante assumes that his words were not very consoling after all. Instead of bothering to reply to Dante, Nero picks up the roll of bandages and leans over Dante, reaching underneath the curve of his back to properly wrap up Dante’s cuts.

“I really do appreciate it, kid. Sorry to drop in on your before test day.”

The bandages around him tighten perhaps a hair too harshly as Nero pulls them taut, not quite able to hide the tremble in his hands, and if Dante were able to move his arms without pain, he’d reach over and cover the boy’s fingers with his own.

“I wish you’d ‘drop in’ more often. You only ever come by when you get hurt.”

Nero’s words are soft, and his baby blue eyes refuse to meet Dante’s own, and Dante wishes that the kid had yelled at him instead, because, _wow,_ this hurts more than the fucking stab wound in his side.

Dante inhales shakily, ignoring the pain in his ribs, trying to keep his voice steady.

“Nero. You know I can’t visit you more often than this. The Spardas have too many enemies lying around the city. If they tracked me down and traced me back to you…”

The kid jerks his head up, glaring at him as he ties off the last of the bandages, his hands curled into fists against Dante’s abdomen.

“So _leave!_ Get an honest fucking job--it’s not like you don’t have the money or the connections to do so. Your dad still has Vergil if he needs an heir, and we both know he’s happy where he is--what’s stopping _you?”_

They both know exactly what--despite everything, Dante can’t escape it. He loves the feeling, he loves the thrill he gets from living on the other side of the law, the rush of power he feels from having power and money and the world in the palm of his hand. It’s the part of himself that he hates and loves the most.

He’s never said it out loud to Nero, but he knows that the kid can tell, so instead, he exhales slowly and looks away.

“Right. You’re a complete _shithead_ , that’s what,” Nero snaps, and Dante can hear the way his voice breaks in the middle, can tell what kind of look will be on Nero’s face before he even turns around, and shame burns through his veins like fire.

“Fuck,” Nero swears again, and Dante imagines that the kid is tugging at his fluffy white locks in irritation. The kid stands up, going back over to stick his head in the fridge, and Dante hears the rustling of ice as Nero scoops it into a plastic bag and seals it, snatching the bottle of Advil and a glass of water off of the table on his way back.

“I hate you so much,” Nero spits at him, pressing the ice to Dante’s wrist and shaking out two of the pain-relieving pills into his palm.

Dante takes the pills with his good hand and brings them to his mouth, following up shortly after with the glass of water that Nero offers him, glad that his mouth is busy so that he has an excuse to stay silent.

“You know what the worst part about this is?”

The kid isn’t looking at him, instead setting a twenty-minute timer on his phone for the ice on Dante’s wrist, but his fingers are gripped so tightly around the device that Dante is honestly worried he might crack something.

“I’m _in love_ with you, and you don’t even give enough of a shit about me to treat me like anything more than your walk-in clinic.”

Now _that_ isn’t something that Dante can just let go.

Ignoring the screaming pain in his overworked body, Dante forces himself upright, bending down to cup Nero’s face with a hand and tilt the kid’s head up, running his thumb across the smooth skin of Nero’s cheek. His head already feels dizzy from the effort of the movement, but he pushes it away because this is important-- _Nero_ is important.

“That’s not true. I’m a shitty person--don’t know how I got lucky enough to end up with someone like you. But you’re pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Nero.”

Nero looks up at him for a long moment, not quite able to hide the obvious hope in his eyes and his hand comes up to cover Dante’s own against his face.

“Can you get up again?”

Not the most romantic response, but Dante probably doesn’t deserve much more than that. He rolls his stiff shoulders, experimentally testing his aching muscles before he pushes himself properly off of the couch, the blood rushing to his head with dizzying force, causing him to almost collapse on top of Nero.

“That’s generally considered to be a ‘no,’ dumbass,” Nero hisses, but gently presses his hands against Dante’s body, mindful of Dante’s various bruises and cracked ribs. “But now that you’re up…”

Dante feels a gentle push against his skin, and realizes where Nero wants him to go, unsteadily allowing the kid to guide him to the bedroom.

He pulls Nero down on top of him as he collapses into the bed, and Nero folds up his glasses, putting them on the bedside table before pressing his face against the uninjured area of Dante’s chest.

“I’m sorry, Nero,” Dante finally says, after a silence, and the apology feels so ridiculously inadequate that he wouldn’t be surprised if Nero just left him here and now. Dante would certainly deserve it.

“Wish you had never met me,” he adds in a softer tone, so quiet that he isn’t sure if he means for Nero to hear it or not.

Nero sighs, going completely limp against Dante, his fingers curled against Dante’s chest.

“Don’t. I don’t wish that. Even if you keep coming back here once every three weeks and you let me think you’re dead and bleed all over my floor, I don’t regret meeting you. Because I’m fucking stupid.”

Dante doesn’t say anything, can’t speak through the guilt he feels for doing this to Nero and his love for the kid fighting for dominance in his brain. Nero tilts his head up, looking at Dante impatiently.

“You still have one good arm, don’t you? Make good fucking use of it already and hold me.”

Dante easily complies, wrapping his arm around Nero’s smaller waist, and he feels Nero relax into his touch.

“Don’t apologize,” he mutters again, and Dante feels the brush of Nero’s soft lips against his skin. “Just...let me pretend. That this is all going to fucking work out and we’ll get a happy ending or some shit.”

If Dante was a better man, he wouldn’t let Nero pretend. He’d do what he absolutely knows is the right thing to do and push Nero away, cut ties with him forever, let Nero love someone else, someone who can give him the kind of relationship he deserves. The boy can’t be in love with him forever if Dante puts a stop to this like he’s supposed to--Nero will be able to move on, eventually.

But Dante is a terrible person, who wants everything that Nero is for himself and himself alone.

His hold around Nero tightens and he shuts his eyes, letting the fight go out of his body and clearing the emotions from his mind.

“Sure, kid. We can pretend.”

The next morning, at the crack of dawn, Dante slips out from underneath Nero, looks down at his sleeping face for a long moment before kissing his forehead, and leaves.

He pretends that he doesn’t know that Nero is actually lying awake in bed as he does so, and Nero pretends that he knows when Dante is going to come back, that he can look forward to the next time he sees the man.

They’ve gotten good at this--Dante could become an actor, if he ever settles down with Nero and leaves his job with the family.

But he won’t.

**Author's Note:**

> i havvvvve twitter  
> https://twitter.com/moolktea


End file.
